Let’s accept that very little information has been revealed about at least one death, and perhaps two, of workers at a Russian plague lab in Siberia that killed within 24 hours of exposure. The death or deaths have been reportedly linked to some form of pneumonic plague.

Isn’t the next logical question what is being done to quarantine the reported disease and to revisit U.S. preparations for what seems like inevitable travel-borne communicable illness.

Amid all the fuss still being stirred over responses to Covid, including the endless campaign of Republican senators and Donald Trump to find some reason to prosecute virologist Anthony Fauci for his role in directing Covid response, one might think there would be just a tad more concern about the appearance of a “plague.”

Apart from all else, this apparently involved a lab leak of the sort critics repeatedly suggested caused the escape of the Covid menace, late recognition of a public contagion, and all sorts of presidential dismissals by Donald Trump about the seriousness of a pandemic that ended shutting the country. In this case, there are undisputed reports that Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. approved funding for research in the very lab about diseases among foxes, the parallel to Fauci’s investment in trying to understand species-crossing contagion.

All that has been disclosed formally so far is that a 28-year-old woman working at a Russian plague lab was exposed to “some sort of plague” and died within 48 hours. Maybe there was a second death. Russian authorities are reportedly monitoring and quarantining the people with whom the woman came into contact. Her death has been reportedly linked to some form of the pneumonic plague.

U.S. Response

Trump last week asserted that U.S. officials did not believe that a Russian lab worker’s reported death was linked to a bioweapon or biological weapons research. “We’re going to find out soon enough, but we don’t think so,” Trump told reporters, adding that he was planning a call soon with Russian leader Vladimir Putin over the matter.

Trump said that Russian officials had reassured their U.S. counterparts that the situation was being contained. The president acknowledged some similarities to how Chinese officials in early 2020 initially claimed they had contained the covid-19 virus before it caused a global pandemic.
World Health Organization officials — Trump has cut ties between the U.S. and WHO — said they still do not know what pathogen caused the first worker’s fatal illness, which pathogens Russian laboratories tested for or why authorities placed roughly 200 contacts under quarantine or medical observation. Without those answers, officials said, they cannot fully assess the public health risk.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said it has established measures to “identify and assess” any travelers from the Russian region where a possible plague case was reported, again counting on halting travelers who rarely come directly from Siberia to the U.S., but rather go to international stops in between, including Istanbul. The CDC said only 200 travelers from the region arrive in the U.S. each year.

The White House has shut down its pandemic response units, fearing association with Covid shutdowns as politically toxic.
One Russian news report said that the technician “allegedly broke a test tube containing the pneumonic plague pathogen” on Sept. 25, that she soon fell ill and died in a local hospital. Pneumonic plague is almost always fatal when untreated, but many patients recover with a prompt course of antibiotics. The incubation period for this type of plague is up to six or seven days. And, we know that Kennedy has canceled much of the CDC’s ability to track communicable disease and to issue warnings.

The Kennedy Research

According to an investigation by animal testing watchdog White Coat Waste, which claims it was the first to raise questions about Covid escaping the Chinese lab thought to be a possible origin for Covid, Kennedy has overseen nearly $800,000 in federal funding for a research project involving a Russian laboratory with ties to the Siberian facility at the center of a suspected plague outbreak.

It’s of interest by itself, of course, but more directly because it so parallels the exact arguments that selected Republican senators and the administration have pursued against Fauci.

The National Institutes of Health awarded $779,689 to the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 2025 and 2026 for research conducted in partnership with Russia’s state-run Institute of Cytology and Genetics.

Federal records obtained by the group and reported on Wednesday show that the project received $389,943 in July 2025 and another $389,746 in September 2026. The NIH-funded research was to examines the genetic underpinnings of social behavior using foxes raised at a Siberian breeding facility. According to documents, Russian researchers euthanize the animals and transport biological samples to the United States for analysis.

In 2022, Joe Biden’s administration ordered a winddown federally supported scientific partnerships with Russian government institutions following Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

Nervous yet?

##

Terry H. Schwadron retired as a senior editor at The New York Times, Deputy Managing Editor at The Los Angeles Times and leadership jobs at The Providence (RI) Journal-Bulletin. He was part of a Pulitzer Gold Medal team in Los Angeles, and his team part of several Pulitzers in New York.

The Washington Post reports President Donald Trump’s many policies are taking a hammer to the U.S. tourism industry, according to numbers.

“This summer was a dismal one for international tourism in the U.S. According to the National Travel and Tourism Office, overseas visits were down by 1.8 percent in June (when the World Cup began and most teams were involved) compared with the same month in 2025,” reports The Post. “In July, when the soccer final was held, the numbers were down 7 percent, and in August, 11.8 percent. Provisional figures show that overseas visits were also down 4.3 percent in September, year over year.”

Trump’s unilateral attacks on Iran have ramped up prices all over the world, not just in the U.S. This has whacked fuel prices even harder in places like Europe and nations with the expendable income to fly across the ocean. So much so, that that planes appear to be carrying less passengers to U.S. airports.

The U.S. is one of the only major countries in the world losing tourism as the world continues to rebound from COVID-19 shutdowns. But joining Trump’s prohibitive prices appear to be Trump’s federal forces picking through tourists’ belongings and scrutinizing valuables and identification when they touch down in airports.

“Overseas travel has become more expensive since the Iran war pushed up the price of jet fuel. But it is hard to avoid the conclusion that America’s previously robust tourism industry has become collateral damage in the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown,” reports the

Apparently, new Trump-era rules allow agents to “undertake basic searches without any reasonable suspicion,” reports the Post, and this “undercuts America’s standing as a bastion of personal liberties.”

Scenes of U.S. agents “rummaging through the smartphones, laptops and other electronic devices of visitors,” are on the rise, reports the Post. And it does not help that tourists are now required to surrender passwords or risk being refused entry and having their devices seized.

In fiscal 2025, the Post reports U.S. Customs conducted 55,000 searches of international travelers’ devices — an 18 percent increase from the year before. And this is a jump from an even earlier snooping Trump regime. In the first quarter of fiscal 2024, agents conducted only 10,937 device searches; in the third quarter of this fiscal year, that number nearly doubled to 19,732.

“For law-abiding travelers planning a vacation, the prospect of a U.S. … official sifting through their emails and social media might make a week in Antigua or Barcelona [less] appealing,” reports the Post, adding that “overzealous” border enforcement elsewhere is compromising an industry of enormous value to the U.S. economy.

“The World Travel and Tourism Council found that international visitor spending in the U.S. in 2025 was $176 billion, a 4.6 percent drop from the year before,” said the Post. “Add another entry to the list of the Trump administration’s unforced errors, as with its tariff regime, that have hindered the free market.”

As inflation remains a top concern for Americans, one former adviser to President Donald Trump says the GOP is the one bearing the brunt of the economic fallout. Gas prices have skyrocketed, groceries are at an all-time high, and job stability seems like a foreign concept in many fields.

"People hate paying more money for gas, and the prices have gone up a lot," said Stephen Moore, who has previously advised the president on the economy, per PBS. "It's frustrating because Trump's done so many good things for the economy. But with the Iran situation, that's really had a big effect on the economy, and Republicans may pay a high price for that."

To combat inflation, typically, cost-of-living increases help. But many Americans are seeing stagnation in their salaries, while others are dealing with record unemployment. A report from TheGrio found that Black unemployment has fluctuated under President Donald Trump’s second administration, ranging from a low of 6 percent to a high of 8.2 percent, which is the highest level since the COVID-19 pandemic.

"The costs of things are absolutely the first thing people talk about, but also it's their pay not keeping up with the cost," notes AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler. "It's a double whammy." Gas prices are the paramount points of discussion for voters as the midterms near.

Misty Reeder, 48, considers herself politically moderate, but growing financial pressures have pushed her to vote exclusively for Democrats in this election. As a disability payment recipient, she said the rising cost of living has made it nearly impossible. “I've noticed that things have been getting a lot harder,” she said. “Something's gotta give,” Reeder said. “It's like a dam — the pressure's too much, and it's going to break.”

Beti Rosales, a 47-year-old business owner from Pennsylvania, voted for Trump in 2024, hoping the administration’s proposed policies would ease inflation and rising costs, but the impact inflation has had on her family’s once-thriving Mexican restaurant has been devastating.

“The reality now is that it actually didn't get better,” she said. “It actually got worse. The prices of everything have increased.” Now, she believes voting Democrat may be her best bet. “Maybe fresh new faces might make a difference?” she suggests.

Several factors play into the current state of inflation, including his trade wars impacting high tariffs. But Trump’s messaging about inflation seems to contradict Americans’ experience. Trump recently claimed the intensity of inflation is not as high, claiming that it is under 2 percent and "under control." Democrats are using Americans' frustrations against Trump.

The U.S. has such a toxic brand that, despite the huge World Cup events, folks don't want to come to the U.S. on vacation and spend hefty tourism dollars.

Axios reported the new numbers this week, and a CNN report noted Monday the U.S. suffered a 20 percent drop in tourism in 2026 from 2025.

The U.S. Travel Association president Geoff Freeman explained that it isn't something happening around the world. This significant drop is coming from tourism only to the United States.

"Travel around the world is growing at a 5 to 10 percent clip, and it's dropping to the U.S. in the same numbers," he said.

CNN co-host Boris Sanchez asked how it would have been different if there hadn't been a huge World Cup event, and Freeman agreed it would have been far worse.

"This is a trend," he explained. "We welcomed nearly 80 million visitors in 2019. We haven't gotten back to that number any year since. While the rest of the world continues to grow, we obviously need to revisit our strategy to figure out what we're going to do to turn the tide."

There were already huge drops in tourism amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Now those numbers are falling even more.

It prompted the CNN hosts to ask what could possibly be causing this anti-American sentiment.

Freeman explained that it's more than just one specific thing.

"There's a variety of reasons they're not coming," he said. "Cost matters. It's because of the war in Ukraine. You can't fly over Russian airspace for Asian travelers. Certainly there are some for whom politics matters, and they're swearing off the United States. I think what's happening more often than not, though, is travelers are reading the foreign press. They're seeing these horror stories. They're worried that if I come here, I'm going to get detained. My device is going to be searched. They're fearful."

One story reported by The Guardian revealed 65-year-old British tourist Karen Newton was detained for six weeks after her tourist visa to the U.S. expired.

Becky Burke, a 28-year-old Welsh backpacker, was held for 19 days and led away in chains. The U.S. claimed she had to be detained "related to the violation of the terms and conditions of her admission." Burke's mother said she thinks the authorities misunderstood. She said that her daughter was trading work around the house for stays at various accommodations, the BBC reported. Burke's mother thinks that they considered this "employment" in the U.S. when she wasn't approved for that.

Still, Freeman said that stories like those are "a misperception of what happens."

He claimed that the World Cup helped dispel a lot of those stories, but it didn't help reset beliefs around the world about the U.S.

Given most tourism is to states like California, Florida, New York and Texas, Freeman said that those states are experiencing huge increases in cost.

"Florida is paying a big price for the drop in Canadian visitation," said Freeman. Canadians began boycotting the U.S. amid President Donald Trump's trade war.

Freeman explained that it isn't merely tourism; Canadian business travel has also fallen.

"People who would come to buy a Caterpillar tractor, they would come to go look at another American good. They're deciding to go to another country right now," said Freeman. "That's the loss we're feeling. Not to mention the fact that these people that come here, we know when they're here, they enjoy their time. They go home and tell their friends and family about the experience they had. When they don't come, it doesn't just cost us now. It costs us down the road because we continue to drive these travelers into the arms of other countries."

President Donald Trump appears keen to please some of the worst of his MAGA supporters as he "tramples his own legacy," a former RNC chair wrote for MS NOW, mounting a "desperate pitch" as his pool of backers gets shallower and shallower.

Michael Steele previously chaired the Republican National Committee from 2009 to 2011, and has since emerged as an outspoken conservative critic of Trump and his political agenda, including in his role as a political analyst for MS NOW. In his latest piece for the outlet on Sunday, Steele wrote that the president is now "undermining [the] biggest accomplishment" of his first term, in a bid to attract "conspiracy-minded voters."

Steele referred to Trump's recent executive order, which called for major changes to the childhood vaccination schedule, after years of right-wing conspiracy theorists falsely claiming that vaccines are dangerous, especially to children. The order specifically calls for the measles, mumps and rubella shots — commonly and safely administered as a combined injection — to be spaced out across multiple appointments.

Steele wrote that this order marked "a remarkable reversal for a president who once treated vaccine development as one of the signature achievements of his first term."

"President Donald Trump’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic was riddled with misinformation and chaos," Steele wrote. "But amid that dysfunction, his administration launched Operation Warp Speed, the public-private partnership that accelerated the development and distribution of COVID vaccines. Trump called it a 'monumental national achievement.' Even Joe Biden, who was running against him at the time, credited the administration when he got the shot. Six years later, Trump is trashing that legacy as he courts the most conspiracy-minded factions of the coalition that put him back in office."

He added later: "While touting the order, Trump made several wildly false and dangerous claims, including the lie that vaccines are linked to autism. It’s a desperate pitch to pro-Trump parents, the Make America Healthy Again movement and conspiracy theorists, all of whom distrust childhood vaccinations. Doctors are urging Americans to ignore Trump’s vaccine order. Compliance with it would lead to reduced efficiency even if it was based in some sort of scientific reality."

Vaccines for COVID-19 were developed in a historically short amount of time across 2020, in large part thanks to the first Trump administration's "Operation Warp Speed" initiative. Supporters and enemies alike have generally agreed that it was one of, if not the single best achievement of Trump's first term. Now, however, as the MAGA right-wing becomes increasingly enmeshed with the anti-vaccine movement, Trump and his allies have become increasingly critical of vaccinations and vaccine requirements, despite the preponderance of scientific evidence, leading them to discount or outright demonize the results of Operation Warp Speed.

"There’s a real risk here," Steel later concluded. "By giving the imprimatur of the White House to these outlandish theories, Trump elevates them in the political conversation and gives them new fuel to metastasize. He turns idle chatter on the internet into official government records and undermines the serious work of historians, scientists and prosecutors. That is bad enough. But with his latest sop on vaccination to the conspiracy-minded, Trump is repudiating his own record, hurting his own supporters and putting the lives of Americans at risk."

President Donald Trump's latest economic moves have him staring down a potential disaster eerily similar to one that haunted his first term, according to a new piece from MS NOW, and it all comes down to one common household staple.

In a piece published Sunday morning, reporter and author Anne Kim examined the recent reports that Trump's reignited trade war with Canada is threatening to disrupt America's supply of toilet paper, calling to mind the rampant shortages of the same product that plagued the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic in the last year of his first term. This time, it is his tariffs on Canada set to make the costs for consumers skyrocket, given that America's northern neighbor is its largest supplier of the vital paper good.

"Remember the Great Toilet Paper Panic of 2020? In the first few months of the COVID-19 pandemic, massive supply chain disruptions led to shortages of many basic goods, including — crucially — toilet paper," Kim explained. "People bartered face masks and hand sanitizer in exchange for precious rolls. Criminals attempted daring toilet paper heists. Bidet sales soared."

She added: "More than six years later, Americans are freaking out over a potential surge in toilet paper prices after President Donald Trump’s trade war with Canada. Canada is the United States’ largest supplier of toilet paper imports, which are now subject to a 50 percent tariff thanks to Trump. (Facial tissues, paper towels and napkins are tariffed, too.) Call it another stain on Trump’s handling of the economy."

Kim noted that the reality of the situation is a little less sensational and foreboding than the reports might suggest, as Canada's contributions to the U.S. toilet paper supply are not as large as one might expect, providing only 5 percent of the product used in the country in 2024. The Canadian wood pulp supply used by American companies to produce toilet paper has also been exempted from tariffs.

Instead, Kim argued that the "virality" of the story suggests that the situation is more like "a symbol of consumer confidence" amid Trump's turbulent economy. The resonance with the 2020 shortages might also lead many anxious consumers to recall some of the worst moments of Trump's past economic performance.

"The Trump administration makes a mistake if it underestimates Americans’ worries over this lowly consumer staple," she argued, adding later that, "By rekindling his trade war with Canada, Trump hasn’t just flushed away the last vestiges of goodwill with our closest ally. He’s wiped away any pretense of concern about Americans’ daily struggles with affordability."

At a time when his network remains under assault by the administration, CNN's top fact-checker Daniel Dale received acclaim as he revealed his top takeaways after a full decade of covering and correcting President Donald Trump.

On Sunday morning, Dale published a new piece marking the notable anniversary, digging into the things he has learned over the years of sifting through Trump's "remarkable number of lies" during his time at the forefront of American political life.

“Ten years ago this month, in my old job as Washington correspondent for the Toronto Star, I started what I believed would be a quick little side project: fact-checking underdog presidential candidate Donald Trump, who was telling a remarkable number of lies but was rarely being corrected. Like a lot of people, I thought Trump would lose the 2016 election,” Dale detailed. "I was very wrong. And Trump continued to be very wrong, about a dizzying variety of subjects, for the next decade.”

He added later in the piece: "The lies cause real harm. Some of Trump’s lies are so bizarre or trivial that I can’t help but laugh. On the whole, though, his lies have been deeply harmful to the country. People died because of the Capitol riot prompted by his lies about the 2020 election. His lies downplaying Covid-19 almost certainly led to deaths, too. Specific people targeted by his lies, including journalists, judges and election workers, have faced threats and harassment. His lies have worsened innumerable public debates around critical policy issues. And American democracy itself is worse off for all the lying, too."

The reaction to the piece across social media was largely glowing, with various colleagues and public figures hailing Dale's efforts and highlighting the particularly important points raised in his new piece.

"Thank you, Daniel Dale, for being one of the few political reporters who is willing to describe Trump's *unmatched* degree of dishonesty and lying more accurately and consistently," communications consultant Susan Bordson wrote in response to the piece on X, highlighting further a "Key excerpt re MSM press practices" in response to Trump's lies.

"Pro-Trump media entities have shown embarrassingly little interest in addressing his lies," Dale wrote in the passage she highlighted. "But more neutral outlets have regularly failed, too. On the last full day of Trump’s first presidency in 2021, I wrote, 'Too often, coverage of flagrantly dishonest Trump speeches still mentioned the dishonesty in passing or not at all. Too often, coverage still quoted the president’s lies without explaining that they were wrong.' More than five years later, these problems persist."

Brian Stelter, a professional colleague of Dale's and chief media analyst for CNN, highlighted some of what he saw as the key takeaways from the piece: "Dale's takeaways include: 'the bigger the crisis, the more Trump lies,' Trump 'is not only a supplier of bad information but a consumer of it,' 'the mainstream media doesn't handle Trump’s lying well enough,' and 'the lies cause real harm.'"

"That our nation has largely adjusted to having a habitual liar as president is shameful," Jennifer Erin Valent wrote. "Worse yet, he has been strongly supported by Christians who claim to honor the God of truth, who are meant to defy the father of lies, and who are commanded not to bear false witness."

"Everybody who supports or opposes Trump should read this, the thoughts of prominent factchecker Daniel Dale on the context and proliferation of Trump's lies," retired Chicago reporter Ray Long wrote.

"One of the heroes of American journalism is this Canadian, who has single-handedly researched and catalogued thousands of lies by our president," Daniel Boardman, dean of the Klein College of Media and Communications, wrote in a post about Dale.

"'Two months before Election Day in 2020… he was telling so many campaign lies that I’d become physically unable to look into all of them while living something loosely resembling a healthy life,'" senior CNN producer Shawn Reynolds wrote in a post quoting Dale's piece. "By then, I’d recorded more than 8,500 false claims since September 2016.”

President Donald Trump is almost constantly repeating the boast that the U.S. is the "hottest country" in the world under his second term, but according to a new piece from The i Paper, expert concerns over "mind-boggling" tourism declines have firmly put a damper on his claims.

Writing for the outlet on Monday, reporter Lauren Trevelyan argued that Trump's brag can no longer stand up to reality, as reports show that the U.S. is one of the only major countries in the world losing tourism as the world continues to rebound from COVID-19 shutdowns. This trend comes despite the country recently hosting the FIFA World Cup, one of the biggest international events around, causing major alarm among experts and analysts.

"America is on track to receive two million fewer overseas visitors than in 2025 (which saw a drop of four million from the year before)," Trevelyan detailed. "Not even hosting the FIFA World Cup could boost the numbers. The lure of the Grand Canyon, Route 66, Las Vegas, the Empire State Building and the rest of America’s famous charms have been overshadowed by Trump’s trade wars, tariffs, jabs at allies and aggressive immigration enforcement. Geoff Freeman, president and CEO of the US Travel Association, described the situation as 'mind-boggling,' telling Axios, 'we’re the only country in the world losing visitation.''"

Breaking down the available information further, Trevelyan explained how the trends in which tourists are no longer visiting the U.S. make the cause of the decline "blindingly obvious."

"Canadians are voting with their feet," she wrote. "In 2025, visits by Canadians to the US fell by about 25 percent, and this year is on track to show similar declines. Apparently, Canadians don’t like Trump saying their country should become the 51st U.S. state, they don’t appreciate having tariffs slapped on them because they’re 'ripping America off,' and they’re taking their (admittedly weak) currency elsewhere."

She added later: "Visitors from Germany and France, traditional allies of the US, are also staying away – down 16 percent and 15 percent so far this year. Trump has claimed that Germany owes 'vast sums of money' to the US, and described various of French President Emmanuel Macron’s remarks as 'brain dead, very nasty.' Early in Trump’s second term, Vice President JD Vance flew to Germany and told the Munich Security Conference that America’s European allies were destroying themselves with immigration and unfairly barring the far right from power. The fiery rhetoric has not gone unnoticed by European tourists, who after all have a choice about where to spend their vacations."

The tourism numbers from the U.K., meanwhile, were largely flat in 2025, defying the downward trend to start. In the first half of 2026, however, "headlines about the deadly shootings of people protesting against aggressive immigration enforcement operations sped around the world, there was a 2.2 percent decline in visitors from the U.K. to the U.S."

"In New York City, where Britons traditionally love to come and shop and take in a Broadway show and a Statue of Liberty harbour tour, the number of UK tourists declined nearly 16 percent in the first six months of 2026, compared to last year," Trevelyan added. "That’s a lot of 'I heart NY' T-shirts, mugs and key rings going spare."

Pete Hegseth, the United States Secretary of Defense, has faced intense scrutiny surrounding his role since he was announced at the start of President Donald Trump’s second presidential term.

There have been a host of missteps, public gaffes, outrageous comments, inflammatory statements and cringeworthy viral videos that have further made many question if he is fit to be in his position — and now high-ranking military officials have reportedly followed suit.

According to a recent interview with the New York Times, Iraq war veteran and Times Opinion columnist David French spoke with former Special Forces officer Mike Nelson about Hegseth’s approach to military leadership, and the pushback he has received.

During the conversation, French pointed out that Hegseth fired certain generals for following orders handed down by the Trump administration, which has ultimately led to ill feelings and distrust.

”I’m so glad you raised the generals, because I had a conversation with one of the fired generals not long ago, and this person pointed out that, in essence, they were fired for following orders,” French began.

“In other words, the Biden administration handed down some edicts and some orders regarding D.E.I. — diversity, equity, inclusion and other things — and as loyal soldiers, whether they agreed or not, they saluted and they carried out those orders,” he said. “And Hegseth comes in and essentially says: Well, if you were carrying out the orders that were the priority of the previous administration, you’re woke, you’re weak, whatever, and you’re gone.”

French continued, adding: “And one of the fears that was expressed to me by this former general was that, well, does that then set a precedent that if you are a general officer and you follow the orders of an administration, that the next administration will come in and purge you, replace you with general officers who have to then follow their orders, who will then only be purged by the next administration?”

He also pointed out the precedent that firings set generals on edge with questions about job security.

“It strikes me that the Trump administration is setting a precedent here that if actually carried out by other presidents would be catastrophic for the integrity of the military,” he said.

“And it’s setting a precedent that, given enough time under the current administration, could be catastrophic for the idea that merit matters as much as political fidelity. But it was very chilling to me to hear the general essentially say, ‘I was fired for following a lawful order.’”

Nelson then offered his take on why generals are rejecting Hegseth’s guidance, while offering insight to the legality of the matter.

“A lot of the criticism that Hegseth has steered toward these generals — who implemented, as you said, the lawful orders of the previous duly elected president and the civilian leadership through the secretary of defense — focus on two things, largely. Well, three things, I guess: D.E.I. in general — kind of a big umbrella — the Covid-19 vaccine mandate and the withdrawal from Afghanistan,” he stated.

“Everything that was just listed, we can disagree with or think were bad ideas or conducted poorly, and all of them were lawful orders from the duly elected president through the civilian leadership,” Nelson said.

”Right now, there’s a great deal of discussion about generals rejecting Secretary Hegseth’s guidance,” he continued. “There are two places that I have concern about legality: One being the overall legality of the war with Iran, and the second being the Sept. 2, 2025, boat strike, at the beginning of Operation Southern Spear.”

Nelson noted that although he (and other generals) may vehemently disagree with Hegseth, his practices are indeed legal.

“I think it’s fair to say that I disagree and think that most of Secretary Hegseth’s stuff or ideas are bad ideas — counterproductive and potentially damaging in the long term — but they are legal. And would he want these same generals that he’s propping up to be fired immediately in 2029, in January, because they implemented his orders?” he asked.

Nelson added: “The secretary needs to remember that his predecessors gave legal orders, whether he agreed with them or not, and he is in a position now to implement new policy, and that’s fine. We may disagree with it, but they are legal orders.”

President Donald Trump has managed a uniquely "terrible" feat, one veteran D.C. reporter explained, with his "colossally dumb" decisions making him directly responsible for things in ways unlike almost any other president.

Asawin Suebsaeng is a senior political correspondent for Zeteo who also previously covered national politics and the Trump administration for Rolling Stone and The Daily Beast. In a thread posted to BlueSky on Monday, he was unsparing in his assessment of the president's economic record, stressing that he was directly responsible for rising costs, an issue most past presidents have been blamed for despite having little actual impact on.

"I need younger generations to understand how weird it is that Trump is such a unique terrible f—— up that it’s actually correct to blame the president for a demonstrably s—— economy and costs," Suebsaeng began. "The job of president is largely: you get to take credit for things that weren’t really your doing, but that means [you] will get blamed for the 'happened on your watch' stuff even [though] presidents don’t generally have that much control over the economy."

He continued: "It is insanely funny that Trump is so colossally dumb that he found ways that maybe no one else would have to make it absolutely right and factual for you to blame him. Under almost any other year of your life, yelling about a plane ticket costing much more than it should and then blaming the president would hopefully get [you] yelled at, like [you] were that guy in Forrest Gump blaming [former President Lyndon] Johnson for him being an a——. You can absolutely [though] correctly yell at this president for your plane ticket. Your gas prices. Your homeowner insurance being much much more expensive. And so many other things big and small, that are *directly* tied to *his* unilateral moves. It’s astounding."

Experts have long noted that many of the economic trends that voters reward or punish presidents for are largely beyond their control, with many reiterating the point while Trump claimed that he would be able to rein in prices during his 2024 reelection campaign. Now, however, Trump's tariffs, trade wars and war with Iran have contributed directly to inflation in unprecedented ways.

Responding to Suebsaeng's posts, former White House economist Aaron Sojourner shared his own take on Trump's economic malpractice from last year, in which he lambasted Trump for driving the economy into a "ditch" after Joe Biden managed a largely successful soft landing from the impacts of COVID-19.

"Our economy was 'the envy of the world.' We had stuck the soft landing," Sojourner wrote. "All he had to do was run his first term playbook. Sit back and claim credit for the economic trends he inherited. But nope. Swerved us towards the ditch."

Conservative columnist and podcaster Josh Hammer has expressed sharp criticism regarding the internal direction of the populist conservative movement following the death of former Turning Point USA leader Charlie Kirk.

In an interview with the Daily Mail, Hammer stated that the movement is experiencing a tumultuous shift, with fringe figures and conspiracy theories threatening to tear down its foundation.

"Since Kirk's death, the madness has only ratcheted up," Hammer told the Daily Mail. "Crackpot, revisionist historians now appear regularly on the world's largest podcasts, conservatives-in-name-only traffic in ancient hatreds and sincere commentators are increasingly drowned out." He added that there has been "a breakdown in the ability of many on the Right to distinguish between fact and fiction, truth and lie, right and wrong."

Hammer argued that the rise of these fringe theories stems from a loss of public trust caused by institutional actions. He cited several events, including the Russia investigation, the institutional response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the handling of the Hunter Biden laptop story, and the legal prosecutions of Donald Trump. According to Hammer, these events led many people to conclude that they cannot trust mainstream information, creating a vacuum for opportunistic commentators.

"Into this vacuum have crawled opportunistic ghouls who are willing to sacrifice credibility for clicks," Hammer said. "But there is nothing good down that rabbit hole, only suffering and immiseration, the very toxic mentality that Kirk fought against so passionately."

Following Kirk's death, podcaster Candace Owens launched a public campaign against Hammer, who is Jewish, accusing him of being complicit in Kirk's murder. Hammer described Owens' claims as "vile and utterly baseless smears," noting that the common denominator among those targeted by such rhetoric is often their Jewish faith or public support for Israel.

Hammer also criticized political leaders for failing to address these elements within the movement. He highlighted Vice President JD Vance's response to questions about his ongoing relationship with commentator Tucker Carlson, whom Hammer considers a primary source of online conspiracy theories.

When asked about Carlson, Vance stated, "Tucker is a friend, despite the fact that we disagree on a number of things. I'm not going to play the game where I throw friends under the bus because I have political disagreements with them."

Hammer rejected that characterization, countering that the issue goes far beyond standard policy debates. "If this were a matter of political disagreement, I may agree," Hammer said. "But it is not. If Carlson were just some friend of the Vice President's, I may let it pass. But he isn't."

Hammer concluded by stating that the conservative movement must regain its footing. "America's conservatives cannot abandon the work of discerning right from wrong," Hammer said.